Metabolism, the city of the future

Following on from the recent city/space theme is a new exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art gallery in Roppongi Hills entitled “Metabolism”.

Metabolism is an architecture movement that started in Japan in the 1960s. From the press release:

Metabolism which sprang up in the 1960s remains the most widely known modern architecture movement to have emerged from Japan. As its biological name suggests, the movement contends that buildings
and cities should be designed in the same continuous way that the material substance of a natural organism is produced. This is the ﬁrst exhibition in the world to provide such a comprehensive overview of the movement.

Models, archive film footage, and 3D computer graphic images of grand visions of future cities held by the architect
Tange Kenzo, as well as Kurokawa Kisho, Kikutake Kiyonori, and others who had come under the inﬂuence of Tange, and their experimental architecture which has become a reality in today’s cities, will be exhibited for exploration of their meaning from a current perspective.

It looks like it’ll provide some great insight into how the future was imagined, in the past. It would be interesting to see how (if at all) the digital world was thought of when designing this then new type of Urbanism.

The exhibition runs from July through to August, 2011. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood you should definitely check it out.